Archaeological remains - who cares?

[Paullus Scipio]

History is just that.......we cannot undo the past. We cannot bring back countless irreplaceable artworks and artefacts such as marble statuary burnt to make lime or mortar, and we should be grateful to the Lord Elgins of this world for helping to preserve what little we do have......
Just as the ebb and flow of history has seen treasures of the past move from Alexandria to Constantinople then to Venice, and others from Greece to Italy, then on to England and France, so in the future, History will see the Great Works continue to move around ( the Getty Collection springs to mind)......it is really of little consequence where they are at any given time, so long as that part of humanity's heritage is preserved for the future.......and surely that is the primary function of Art Galleries, Museums and Archaeology? Preservation of Humanity's Heritage........

When it comes to that preservation, countries should pool together since some have much money but little archaeological heritage, while others, such as Italy and Greece to pick but two, have an embarassingly rich archaeological heritage, without the means to support or even preserve what is there.
Take this case in point:-

If a particular museum in London had a large collection of replicas including, let's say, Michelangelo's David and Trajan's Column, would as many people go to see the replicas as the originals?

If you want to see what Trajan's column looked like, you would do better to go and look at the casts made by Napoleon III now in London ( V&A museum), or the Museo de Civilita Romana outside Rome, or the museum at St Germain-en-Laye.
The studio photographic plates made by the German Professor Cichorius of the Italian copy cast in the 1890's provides the basis of all studies of the Column.
And the original? While still 'in situ' it has been damaged almost to the point of complete destruction by ever-increasing car pollution ( producing sulphuric acid which reacts with and dissolves marble). When I last saw it in 2005, it had significantly deteriorated in the less than ten years since the time before......soon it will be gone......the same fate has befallen the excavated portions of Pompeii and Herculaneum ( fortunately two thirds of Pompeii and most of Herculaneum still lie buried)
PRESERVATION must be paramount, lest we lose what little of the past we still have.........